Presentation to ICA 2016, Fukuoka, Japan

2. Post-Globalization, Cultural Power
and International Broadcasting
Terry Flew, Professor of Media and Communication,
Creative Industries Faculty, Queensland University of
Technology, Brisbane, Australia

3. Political Economy v. Globalization
theories
• Is the relationship between political-economic
and cultural power a strong or weak one?
• Has power become more diffused
internationally, or is Western hegemony
paramount?
• Can dominant ideologies be reconciled with
active/productive audiences?

4. The vexed question of power in
media studies
• Power has often been a term that is widely used but
insufficiently explained.
• Des Freedman: four paradigms of media power:
– Consensus
– Chaos
– Control
– Contradiction
• Cultural studies debates: dominant or contested
meanings?

5. ‘Active audience’ debate in
communication and cultural studies
‘The field of Cultural Studies has perpetually
oscillated between an emphasis on ‘power’ in
terms of the imposition of ideology through culture,
on the one hand, and ‘agency’ in terms of the
relatively freedom of the consumer, on the other’.
(Gibson, 2007, p. 167)

6. International expansion of state
broadcasting
• A key feature of global media since the 2000s has
been the expansion of state broadcasting
internationally
• Almost all major international news broadcasters are
predominantly state-funded: CNN as major exception
• Expansion of international reach frequently justified
in terms of cultural diplomacy, or “soft power”

7. Soft power debates
• Soft power as ‘the ability to get what you want
through attraction rather than coercion or payments’
(Nye, 2004, p. x), and the associated ‘ability to shape
the preferences of others’ (Nye, 2004, p. 5).
• Term can become ‘a synonym for anything other
than military force’ (Nye, 2011, p. 81).
• What is specifically cultural about this power?
• How is culture being used in these definitions?

8. Culture and power internationally
• Soft power and cultural imperialism discourses
bear a strong resemblance (Sparks, 2016)
• Cross-cultural communication studies as well as
audience theories suggest that influence of
imported cultural product can be overstated
• Does imported media content sit at the centre or
margins of national media systems? (Tunstall,
2008)

9. The “distribution fallacy”
• Culture is understood as things/objects/events rather than as
processes
• Transmission model of communciation
• evidence of reach is taken to be synonymous with influence
e.g. claims that CCTV covers ‘98 per cent of the world ... with
45 million subscribers outside China’(cited in Zhang, 2011)
• Distribution fallacy suggests that more will be spent on
distributing content than assessing impact or influence

10. Cultural power and post-globalization
• Political, economic and cultural power – interconnected
(critical political economy) or divergent (globalisation theories)
• How does cultural power intersect – or not – with political
and economic power?
• How active are audiences in the shaping of cultural meaning?
• What implications do new media have – “new public
diplomacy” debates
• Continuing power of nation-states in global context – post-
globalization